Beyond the Russian Mistral

August 29, 2009 · Posted in Amphibious Warfare, Marines · Comment 

Russia appears interested in expanding their expeditionary and amphibious standoff capabilities by purchasing French Mistral class amphibious assault warships. Great story and well covered and discussed in the blogs/journal articles below.

Thoughts on the Mistral at Information Dissemination

Russia Scopes Fancy Imports in Window-Shopping Weapons-Buying Spree at Wired: Danger Room

The big question in my mind after reading all of this was how well is Russia positioned in terms of ship to shore connectors to support operations from a Mistral?

Helicopter capacity is 16 heavy helicopters with 6 landing spots on deck. Using the French NH-90 as a metric you can get roughly the same number of the KA-29 B Assault helicopters on board. The problem though is the first KA-29 B IOC’d in 1985 and I can only assume that by the time one of these ships comes into service very few would be left if any at all and something new would have to be developed or purchased. Quickly looking at what the Russian military helicopter industry is doing the MI-38 is likely to replace army transports and its stats are not extremely different then the existing KA-29 or French NH-90 although it is bigger.

Name Height Length Rotor Diameter Max Speed Troop Capacity
NH-90 5.23 m (17 ft 2 in) 16.13 m (52 ft) 16.30 m (53 ft 5¾ in) 300 km/h (186mph) 20
KA-29 B 5.5 m (18 ft) 10.4 m (34 ft) 15.75 m (51.64 ft) 270 km/h (166mph) 16
MI-38 5.13 m (16 ft 10 in 19.70 m (64 ft 8 in) 21.10 m (69 ft 3 in) 275 km/h (171mph) 32
* All data pulled from internet (wikipedia) and correlated with at least one other source (internet or Combat Fleets).

Landing craft capacity for the Mistrals is roughly 2 LCAC (assume US LCAC pictured above is the metric) or 4 LCM’s. A quick look shows the Russian Zubr and Aist type LCAC are definitely out as they are much too large and there are very few Lebed LCAC’s left in service (again IOC’d sometime in the early to mid eighties) although they have operated from Ivan Rogov class amphibious warships (see picture below) in the past. There are several other types of Russian LCAC’s but there are no current LCAC type projects specifically suited for well deck operations.  If Russia chooses the slower LCM path they do have several types that may be suitable although very old and slow. In any case, Russia would have to develop or purchase new landing craft to support the Mistral although given their experience they’re positioned well to do so. My only other thought is maybe a new Chinese LCAC design or investment in the CNIM French L-CAT program. If they’re willing to buy Mistral its not a stretch to think they’d go import for their landing craft choice too.

Finally there is the amphibious vehicle option with the Mistral’s capability to carry 59 vehicles of different types. Russian Naval Infantry Brigades do employ BTR-80 APC, PT-76 amphibious Tanks and possibly a few BMP-3 IFV types however like most navies vehicles like these suffer from range, speed and sea state limitations that other methods of landing do not. Fact even employing them generally forces the amphibious force close to shore generally negating their standoff advantage. I can’t see any Navy really investing more in this until these limitations are overcome and given that no nation has really solved this it would be a major project.

So clearly if the Russia does purchase Mistral class ships they’ll have to make a significant investment in ship to shore connectors as well. Most of their current gear is old but they’re experienced enough to build and could certainly buy as well.   It’ll be interesting to see if this purchase pans out which way the Russians will go and how it will shape the naval infantry in the years to come.

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THAAD Flight Test 10 Vid

August 25, 2009 · Posted in Missile, missile defense · Comment 

Lockheed Martin posted a good video explaining the last flight test and how the THAAD system works and figured it was worth a post.  This system along with PAC-3 Patriot system constitutes US terminal phase missile defense and is being fielded in at least battery strength by the 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade out of Fort Bliss, Texas.

This one got me looking/googling for any games or simulations that might have modeled the different phases of missile defense but came up empty. Anybody have a clue?

No D not Missile Command.

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MAKS 2009 review

August 24, 2009 · Posted in Uncategorized · Comment 

Source: Kobus

 

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PAK-FA’s AESA radar

August 20, 2009 · Posted in Uncategorized · Comment 

Steve Trimble has a video of the presentation of the PAK-FA’s AESA radar:

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The modern Great Leaps Forward for China

August 15, 2009 · Posted in Uncategorized · Comment 

Feng has a very interesting listU1335P27T1D470212F3DT20071102080452 of military systems that recently joined the Chinese navy or air force, and constitute significant improvements in the capabilities of the Chinese military:

I’ve ranked these systems based on their importance to China’s national security, their quantitative and qualitative value and their significance to China’s overall military aviation and naval industry. […] I’ve also omitted high profile projects like J-10B, Z-15, H-6K, the large transport, CAC UAV (the one that looks like global hawk), because they are only in early stage of development, although they have a couple of prototypes in certain cases. I have also omitted high profile space missions from my list like Project 921 (the manned space mission), Tian-Lian (data link satellite), YaoGan series (the EO satellites) and the moon mission, because it’s hard to determine how much military value they really have.

The list features the usual high-profile suspects (ASBMs, DF-31, Type 094 SSBN, KJ-200/2000 AWACS) but there are also items that don’t often get mentioned when one discusses new Chinese capabilities: The Chinese GPS-equivalent, Type 022 FACs, the immensely important EW variants of the Y-8, the Z-10 attack helo etc. Definitely a worthy read.

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